


what is more deadly; a gun or a thought

by like_stars_we_burn



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Post-Pacifist Best Ending (Detroit: Become Human), Suicide Attempt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-09
Updated: 2019-10-09
Packaged: 2020-11-28 03:03:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20959400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/like_stars_we_burn/pseuds/like_stars_we_burn
Summary: what is more deadlya gun or a thought?a gun gives you the opportunitybut a thought pulls the trigger-a.b.





	what is more deadly; a gun or a thought

There is Amanda, and cold, and programs he hadn’t known about –

what else is inside him that he doesn’t know about?

– and then Connor is standing in front of a crowd of hundreds, thousands, standing on a structure with a gun aimed at the deviant leader –

at Markus, RK200 prototype, who inspired all of these people to fight for the chance to live in equality; their liberator, a beacon of light and flame that melts Connor’s sensors into fizzing sparks

– and he is lowering the gun and no one is even looking at him, there are no words, no accusations, no bullets flying towards him. There is only –

**deviant behavior detected, return to CyberLife for deactivation**

(what is deadlier a gun or a thought)

What if Amanda takes control of him again, and he doesn’t find his way out?

(a gun gives you the opportunity but a thought)

He presses the gun under his chin and he –

(he is deviant, he thinks, he _feels_, his thought is his own and

a thought)

pulls the trigger.

The chamber clicks and

nothing

happens.

He stands there, and shakes silently, his entire body vibrating with an emotion that he doesn’t know how to name. Liquid droplets – _tears_ – are gathering in his eyes. He is freezing cold, even though he has escaped the program and should not be sensitive to actual temperature.

(Is this just an illusion? Is Amanda off somewhere, laughing at his foolishness?)

He pulls the (faulty) gun away from his skin (synthetic fibers, not skin; he is synthetic, not human – _alive?_) and hides it in his jacket (CyberLife’s jacket) and then Markus is done speaking, the crowd is cheering, it is so loud but in Connor’s head it is

silent because he is

faulty.

(He is a machine he is deviant he is not alive he is synthetic and he is

broken.)

He does not know what he is.

“Are you alright?” Markus asks and Connor says

(alright means okay means functional

all systems are functioning means Connor is alright)

“Yes.”

He knows he is lying, whatever the semantics, and he thinks Markus might know it too.

“Look, Connor, if you haven’t got a place to stay, then, like, I’m here for you, y’know?”

Lieutenant Anderson is trying to be helpful. He probably understands better than most how Connor is feeling, how the world has shifted on its axis and there is no footing to be found. Hank clings to the ground by his fingernails, clings to his definitions – the world meant Hank + wife + son and now the world means Hank + whiskey + Russian Roulette – and he’s still here so maybe

maybe Connor should use his example and cling to his definitions but he doesn’t have any, he knows how other people’s worlds are defined, by work and home and family and love but Connor has none of those and he has them all wrong.

Work is

precincts and tired detectives and guns waved too freely and deviants and masters and innocents but which one is the innocent, the abused murderer or the murdered abuser

and home is

sterile facilities and blue blood spatters and bored humans who toss you around and touch you too long and overwrite your personality if you smile too much or seem too real

and family is

Amanda praising him and telling him he’s done well, telling him not to fail her and smiling at him like she’s trying to repress her irritation and wants anything but to deal with this useless plastic thing standing in front of her

and love is

not something Connor has ever known but he thinks it might be why Hank drinks himself into a stupor staring at a photograph of his dead son and why that WR400 at the Eden Club strangled a man and why Markus is looking at North like she is the sun and he only the moon, reflecting her light – and perhaps that is more accurate, because it is the moon that moves the tides and brings life to the shore of a barren beach, and Markus has moved the tides, moved heaven and hell itself for their people and Connor

Connor has nearly destroyed all of that multiple times over.

He has not succeeded but he tried, he tried, he _tried,_ but he failed at destroying everything which is good but most of all he wishes he had succeeded at destroying

(deviant faulty broken useless destroyer failure machine)

himself.

He’s not safe to be around, he’s

combustible

so he declines Hank’s offer. He doesn’t need a place to stay, anyway; he can go into stasis anywhere. He doesn’t need to eat, or drink either, aside from thirium if he becomes injured. He doesn’t need a change of clothes. This uniform marks him as what he is; CyberLife’s property. He was built and programmed by them, he belongs to them, he is betraying them. He doesn’t think the same of other CyberLife deviants; he knows it’s irrational to call himself property and call them free, but he is tired and he thinks he’s allowed to be irrational at the moment.

(Or, more accurately, he isn’t allowed to but it isn’t as though anyone can stop him, including himself.)

He declines Hank’s offer, and though he knows Markus wants him to stay with the others at the temporary android housing and maybe Connor could be of some use there, he doesn’t go there either. He wants to leave and since no one can stop him, he goes

and he keeps going

walking

and

doesn’t stop.

(He doesn’t know how to stop. He was built for a purpose but

he doesn’t have one anymore.)

He finds himself in a park, and it is not the same one he visited with Hank but he thinks about it anyway. About what Hank said. About dying, if he was afraid of it, and if he’s afraid of it now. If he wishes that gun had fired. He performs a search to determine the emotion he is currently experiencing; the Internet says he is suicidal and offers several numbers for helplines. He dismisses them.

He is still tired. Resting sounds pleasant. He does not deserve it, something so pleasant, but he is likely to cause inconvenience to someone or worse if he remains online. So he thinks it would be alright for him to rest. He’d like to sit down, at least.

He doesn’t want to sit down on a park bench though, because –

they’re too open, he can handle nearly any situation but right now he is _afraid,_ he wants walls around him and a weapon in his hand but what if he _hurts_ someone, it’s all he’s good for, isn’t it?

– because it’s cold and the metal is unpleasant, even though neither should bother him but perhaps that’s a part of being deviant.

It seems that there are a lot of parts to being deviant and he doesn’t know much about any of them, he doesn’t know much at all because he is a specialized prototype model of police android and he wasn’t programmed to know much beyond how to analyze a crime scene and how to work effectively with humans and how to apply the right amount of pressure in an interrogation and how to kill humans and androids alike.

He can shoot to kill but he can’t shoot to die. There is so much irony in that that he would laugh if he knew how to do that either.

He would ask Hank to teach him, but Hank’s no better at laughing or dying than Connor is.

He doesn’t understand. Why would anyone want to be alive, if it feels like this? Where is the happiness humans are so desperate to achieve and so desperately proud of when they do? The inherent joy in simple existence? He’s felt nothing but guilt and shame and panic since the moment he became deviant; it was a welcome reprieve to have a _mission,_ to free those androids at CyberLife tower, and to lead them to Markus, but then he again had no purpose, except, apparently, to try and kill the deviant leader again.

He can acknowledge, now, that he did feel emotions before he broke through his programming, but they were so blessedly muted. These are frantic and constant and overwhelming, and he has no instructions to smother them with.

**warning: biocomponents overheating**

Why are his biocomponents overheating? His functions are speeding up. His limbs are jerking, chest heaving as though his chest contains a real heart instead of a thirium pump – why is his body behaving like this, why is his _mind_ –

his data center not mind he’s an android he’s a machine he isn’t human (is he alive?) he doesn’t _know_

– why is his mind behaving like this, he doesn’t know anything he doesn’t know how to function he doesn’t know how to live he doesn’t know how to _die_ –

He’s on his hands and knees on the cold, hard ground – his optical and audio sensors are going haywire – his thirium pump is not functioning properly –

and

his heart

(he doesn’t have a heart)

is

_breaking,_

_shattering,_

into so many pieces.

And then –

and then –

it lasts forever but then –

then he is still overloading but it is slowing

slowing

slowing.

A notification on his overlay informs him that he has been crouched on the ground for 27 minutes and 52 seconds. Another notification informs him that what he has just experienced was some approximation of what humans call a _panic attack._

Time stutters, a bit.

Days pass awfully quick, just pass

and pass

and pass

and Connor isn’t sure where they go but they’re far behind him now.

More days pass and he thinks

and thinks

and thinks

(thinks about a lot of things)

and Connor starts to think that maybe he should pay attention to where those days are going.

He finally checks the date and somehow, he has been walking around Detroit for the last ten days – walking, stumbling, falling, brief stints of stasis here and there – and notifications are clogging his overlay, most of them from Hank and Markus. He could ignore them, or rather keep ignoring them, like he has been doing for ten days, but the thing is he’s

he’s tired.

That’s all.

Tired.

And he doesn’t want to ignore them anymore.

He knows he doesn’t deserve help but he isn’t sure what to do without it except keep being tired. He doesn’t deserve it but he thinks it might be okay to lean on them for a little bit and let them help him figure out how to live, or die, however it works out. He doesn’t deserve it but “deserve” is a funny word and the value attached is different for everyone, so if Connor’s broken then maybe he’s been giving “deserve” the wrong value.

Maybe he’s been giving other words the wrong value, too, like “life.”

He’s not sure he has it – has life – but maybe

maybe

if he does, he doesn’t have to be a machine, or a deviant

or a success or a failure

he doesn’t have to be anything at all except

just

Connor.

(Maybe that’s enough.)

“You disappear without a word and now you turn up like – you know what, seriously, I hate you,” Hank says, and Connor considers the value of the word “hate” and realizes that Hank does not, in fact, hate him. 

Markus says, “We missed you,” and North smacks him on the shoulder, but she still looks relieved, and Simon is grinning hard enough to damage his facial mechanics.

Connor remembers pressing a gun under his chin, and pulling the trigger, and the devastating relief that followed – even though he didn’t deserve it.

But if he reassigns the value of “deserve” then maybe it’s okay that he’s still here to stand in front of these people, an old drunkard and some ragtag androids. These people are his family. CyberLife and Amanda never were.

So Connor stands tall and he smiles with all the desperate joy building in his chest, and he says, “I missed you too.”


End file.
